Self-Management

Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) enhances our ability to manage our feelings, thoughts, and behaviors in a variety of contexts. In this part of the SEL Toolkit, we link to resources that help youth work professionals:

Promote a growth mindset and grit

Nurture motivation to learn

Facilitate goal setting

Facilitate emotional regulation

Integrate mindfulness practices

Following these topics you will find resources designed especially for young people.

Promote a Growth Mindset and Grit

Carol Dweck and other researchers have observed that rewarding effort, grit, and perseverance helps children and adolescents develop a growth mindset -- the belief that you can learn and achieve by making persistent efforts. By contrast, those who have a "fixed" mindset believe that innate ability, rather than effort, determines success. A growth mindset increases learning and exploration as well as the ability to handle frustration and failure, while a fixed mindset can lead to a sense of inadequacy as well as failure to keep trying if success isn't achieved right away.

Strategies to promote a growth mindset include:

Educate youth about growth and fixed mindsets

Discourage labels -- such as "smart" or "dumb" -- that convey fixed ability

Praise effort, strategies, and progress, not intelligence or abilities

Provide challenging activities with the understanding that challenges are fun and mistakes help people learn and improve

Mindset

Carol Dweck's website describes her research and findings. It also provides an online self-assessment and strategies to develop a growth mindset.

In rural New Hampshire, fifth-grade teacher Amy Lyon has created a curriculum based on researcher Angela Lee Duckworth's ideas about grit. Students set and work toward their own long-term goals, learning valuable lessons about dealing with frustration and distractions along the way.

Nurture Motivation to Learn

How Youth Learn: a Portfolio to Inform and Inspire Educators, Students, Parents & More

Part of the WKCD "How Youth Learn" Portfolio, The Motivation Equation is a free e-manual on inspiring young people to learn. The portfolio includes additional resources such as research highlights and student voices, as well as multimedia education tools such as the video Ned's Gr8 8: An Insider's Guide to the Teenage Brain.

Integrate Mindfulness Practices

Helpguide's Benefits of Mindfulness

Mindfulness is the practice of purposely focusing your attention on the present moment -- and accepting it without judgment. This web page provides guidance and simple mindfulness practices, with links to resources.

Originally created in Australia and now supported by the Inspire USA Foundation, this interactive website is for youth who face tough times and may struggle with mental health issues. Written by and for teens and young adults, the site provides facts, stories, videos, and other resources.